Rise & Shine with Adrienne Gold Davis

Pregnant with her first child, Adrienne was terrified she felt nothing and afraid she wouldn't love her baby.

Everyone told her the same thing: "You'll see." They were right. Love didn't arrive first. It grew with every feeding, every sleepless night, every diaper.

Jewish tradition connects ahavah, love, to hav, to give. We come to love what we give to.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

The power went out next door and stayed out for three days. My husband came home the minute it was safe to drive, found an extra-long extension cord, and ran it from our back door into our neighbors' house so their food wouldn't spoil. Nobody asked him to.

Later I told a friend about it. She isn't Jewish, and she said something I didn't expect. From everything you have taught me about Judaism, isn't that the whole point? Sharing your power and your light.

I burst into tears because she was right.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

If you are carrying something against someone who never apologized, this episode offers a place to start without asking you to pretend you are fine. Adrienne opens with what an old friend told her years later: she used to be jaded, judgmental, and very good at holding a grudge. Becoming a mother in her thirties forced her to ask what she actually stood for, and the answer came from Jewish wisdom she chose to act on before it felt natural.

Teshuvah, the Jewish practice of return, is easy to talk about and genuinely hard to do.

In this Rise & Shine conversation, Adrienne Gold Davis walks through the four steps of Teshuvah: cessation, regret, confession, and resolution, with author and educator Carly Israel, who has been sober for 27 years. Carly explains why nothing else works until you stop, why regret arrives after you stop rather than before, and how confession moves you from feeling bad about yourself to seeing the facts clearly. Adrienne is candid about her own struggle with control and what it cost her as a parent. Together they land on something you can use before Rosh Hashanah: choose one small action, repeat it every day, and let the behavior change the thinking.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

If you're listening to Rise and Shine, chances are that something you've heard here has stayed with you. Maybe it made you think differently. Maybe it gave you language for something that you were feeling. Maybe it helped you feel more connected to yourself, your Jewish identity, Israel, or the Jewish people.

Over the years, I've received thousands of messages from women sharing how Momentum has impacted their lives — from this podcast to the journey of growth in Israel and beyond. And I've seen what happens when that spark takes hold. When you inspire a woman, that impact ripples outward to her family, her community, and the next generation. And we have a lot more work to do.

So at a moment when Jewish families are navigating so much uncertainty, we have a choice about the Jewish future that we want to create. Because the future isn't something we wait for. It's something we build together.

During Momentum's Mothers Move the World campaign, September 9th and 10th, I'm asking you to build it with us. Support Momentum today, and help more women live their Jewish values, strengthen their families, and shape the Jewish future.

Visit causematch.com/MothersMoveTheWorld to make a donation. Thank you.

Some people irritate us for reasons we cannot explain. This episode offers a Jewish framework for what is really happening, and a practical way to use it.

Adrienne Gold Davis tells the story of a rooftop dinner in Jerusalem, where a young speaker got under her skin until the woman beside her leaned over and said the speaker could have been Adrienne's daughter. What followed was an uncomfortable education in projection: judging in others what we have buried in ourselves.

For a Jewish approach to judgment, self-awareness, and loving your fellow as yourself, LISTEN, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

If you have ever lain awake worrying that you are getting parenting wrong, this conversation is for you. Adrienne Gold Davis sits down with Dr. Michael Milobsky, a pediatrician with more than thirty years of experience and a father of seven, to sort the worries worth your energy from the ones you can put down.

They talk through the fears that follow us from infancy onward: missed milestones, sleep, picky eating, screens, and the pressure of raising kids in an age of constant information. Milobsky offers a steadying frame borrowed from child development: parents are shepherds, not engineers. Your job is love, protection, and the right environment, not turning your child into someone they were never built to be.

The deeper thread is one every parent will recognize: so much of what unsettles us in our children points back to our own unfinished work.

LISTEN, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE this episode with a parent who needs it:

Learn more about Dr. Milobsky:

Your child's teacher spends more waking hours with them than almost anyone outside your home. Adrienne Gold Davis opens Season 30 of Rise & Shine with a case for putting the bar back up: the honor Jewish tradition asks us to give our parents extends to the people who teach our children. She also shares the pediatrician's line that reframes why your well-behaved student falls apart the moment he walks in your door. 

What if getting older is not about losing who you were, but discovering who you are still becoming?

In this episode of Rise & Shine, Adrienne Gold Davis shares seven lessons she has gathered with age: stay hungry for wisdom, tell yourself the truth, stop running from discomfort, love people without demanding sameness, and protect your peace without losing your humanity.

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

Is it ever okay to step back from a parent? In this episode of Rise and Shine, Adrienne Gold Davis explores one of the most painful and least-discussed questions in Jewish family life: what to do when a relationship with a parent becomes harmful. Drawing on Bowen Family Systems Theory alongside Jewish teaching on honoring parents, Adrienne unpacks why complete cutoff often isn't resolution so much as a quieter form of the same conflict, and why generational patterns repeat until someone chooses to interrupt them. She shares Jewish sources on the limits of the obligation to honor a parent, and makes the case that protecting your well-being and your children's well-being can itself be an act of honor, not a betrayal of it. 

The Rise & Shine Podcast Series is made possible by the generous support of Bonnie Vozar of Chicago, Illinois. If you would like to sponsor an upcoming podcast, please email us at [email protected]

How can we relate to the loss of the ancient temple when we never knew it in the first place?